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Tag: Joan Nathan

Today on “What’s Cooking Wednesday,” we are excited to share a special guest post and recipe from food writer Joan Nathan, who will be speaking at the National Archives on May 25 with Chef Spike Mendelsohn about Jewish holiday traditions and cooking.

In all the years I have been writing about food, I thought that I would have heard of every Jewish recipe known to mankind. To my delighted surprise, I have not—something that keeps this profession so very dynamic.

The United States is such a multicultural country that every ethnic group can find its culinary roots in one of the many immigrant communities throughout this amazing land. Jews are no different. Our food has gone mainstream in many areas: bagels, brisket, matzo balls, chopped liver, and challah. Who hasn’t heard of challah French toast?

Although the ancestors of three-quarters of America’s Jews came here in the Great Migration from Eastern Europe between the 1880s and early 1900s, today’s Jews are a mishmash of many backgrounds, Jewish and non-Jewish.

I just tasted, for example, one of the best bagels in America at Cincinnati’s Marx Hot Bagels; considered so American that it was featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1976. John Marx, who learned to make bagels from a Jewish bagel baker in the 60s, only learned recently that he … [ Read all ]

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